I am pleased to announce today grants worth $560 million for health and medical research to more than 50 universities and research institutes. These successful grants are the outcome of the major funding round for the Australian Government’s 2008 National Health and Medical Research grants.
The grants will fund research in a wide variety of medical research areas, including heart disease, obesity, cancer, child health, depression and chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma.
Australia has produced world-leading scientists, researchers and medical pioneers. This funding, provided through the National Health and Medical Research Council, will support Australia’s best researchers.
The Australian Government has a proud record of investment in medical research. From 1995-96 through to 2009-10, there will be a five-fold increase in the Commonwealth Government’s investment in health and medical research. Funding will reach $695 million a year by 2009-10.
Today’s announcement covers more than 660 Project Grants totalling $336 million which have been awarded to 49 research institutions across Australia. Project Grants support individuals and small teams of researchers undertaking biomedical, clinical, public and preventative health research.
Funding of $106 million has been awarded through 12 Program Grants for high-calibre teams undertaking large-scale collaborative research. These grants are worth between $4 million and $14 million each and cover research into Type 1 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, glaucoma, genetic analysis of complex human diseases and reproductive health.
Two prestigious Australia Fellowships, worth $4 million each, have been awarded to two outstanding Australian researchers — Dr Matthew Cooper, currently in the UK, who will return to Australia to work at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, and Professor Wendy Hoy, currently Director of the Centre for Chronic Disease at the University of Queensland.
Dr Cooper’s expertise is in antibiotic resistance, and changes in cells during the initiation and evolution of cancer. Professor Hoy has a distinguished research record in chronic disease among indigenous Australians.
More than $50 million has been awarded for 88 Research Fellowships, with an average value of more than $570,000, while $6.7 million has been awarded to 18 health professionals to allow them to maintain research as well as professional careers.
Funding of $15 million has been awarded to five Special Program Grants for research on Type 1 diabetes, in conjunction with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. Infrastructure funding payments for independent medical research institutes totalling $28 million have been approved across 35 institutes, and 61 Equipment Grants totalling $9 million have also been awarded.
Canberra, 25 September 2007
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